Replies

"Turn off the TV, hibernate the computer, put the beer back in the fridge, get off your fat lazy ass and get a freakin job!"

I beg to differ. It might be a boom on paper, but not in all industries, and some of the practices are downright cutthroat. After being out of work for a year I finally have a job -- and I absolutely hate it. I *was* a software developer, but now can't get a similar job to save my life. I'm now an administrator of a software project, which for developers is the secret tenth level of Hell created especially for us.

I couldn't count the number of nibbles I've had for "Java" development positions, but the second the recruiter hears that I don't have J2EE experience I never hear from them again. You see, NO ONE anymore wants people with computer science experience, no matter how many times they've applied their experience to differing languages and technologies. All the *recruiters* care about is getting their "sell" by marketing you to their client, and all their *clients* care about is a body they can drop right into the meat grinder for the crisis they've managed themselves into. Forget about being given a chance to learn something -- you either walk in the door with it or not, and if they hire you for technology x you can bet that that's all you'll work with and not be given a chance to learn anything else. No matter that the technologies change every five years -- that's only eight or nine times in a person's career -- you're either their guy or you're not, and if not, sorry, Charlie, maybe next time. There might be lots of "IT" jobs, but the truth is the software development industry today is completely pigeon-holed and when people get laid off it's impossible for them to recover. I call that unabashed, downright immoral greed on the part of IT employers and recruiters (who usually don't even know what the buzzwords mean and aren't worth spit in my book).

I work in software and every word of that is utter nonsense.

And this is a boom economy in the freest and richest country in the history of the world, and you've got some nerve moaning about any of it. If you aren't working at Best Buy scrubbing malware out of ignorant user's PCs for the Geek Squad you should count yourself lucky, and so should those who are doing that, and so should those working checkout there, or new door at Starbucks making shots.

Graditude, people. If you live without it, you would be miserable even if money grew on trees.